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AUGUSTA — Senate Democratic Leader Troy Jackson released the following statement regarding the gathering of white supremacist hate groups in Charlottesville, VA, on August 11 and 12, and regarding the troubling reactions by President Trump and Gov. LePage to the same.

“Joshua Chamberlain, born in Brewer, was a pivotal Union leader at the Battle of Gettysburg. President Lincoln’s first vice president, Hannibal Hamlin, was born in Oxford County and was a vocal abolitionist. But not every Maine Civil War hero has a monument in their name. Tens of thousands of Mainers put their lives on the line to defend our Union from the Confederacy. Thousands of them died on the field of battle to protect the principle outlined in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal.

“Leaders are always tested. But the willingness to stand up against bigotry, to unequivocally condemn the ideology of hate, is one of the easiest tests of all. There are no ‘two sides.’ The white supremacists and neo-Nazis who gathered in Charlottesville represent the same radical ideology that threatened the future and safety of our nation during the Civil War. Their hateful vision of oppression and subjugation of their fellow man is the same one that so many Mainers fought, and died, to defeat.